Religion Dispatches
…icane to serve red wine in plastic cups by candlelight, I learned that the proprietor had recently been convicted of starting a fire in the building during a bout of depression. The hurricane had made things worse, but he was going to lose his business anyway. This man, whom I had just met and who would be in jail in a few days, refilled our cups. “Thank you for your support,” he said. We drank a toast. None of this was on the map, exactly, but i…
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…tions of a “unified Reich”—but there is more than enough evidence that the presumptive presidential candidate for the GOP is a man who very much fashions himself in the style of fascist dictators. And, of course, we need not scour his timeline or zoom in on blurry video stills for clues to Trump’s admiration for the Third Reich. As some have noted recently, several years ago Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly told CNN’s Jim Sciutto about his boss’s…
Read More…an’s voodoo shop. The Anba Dlo festival is also intended as a philanthropy project that calls attention to an often ignored problem. At midnight, following the conference, Glassman held a ceremony to invoke “La Siren,”—the Haitian name for the Yoruba sea goddess Yemaja. The ceremony was partly to apologize to the goddess for damage caused by the BP oil spill of 2010, and partly to seek her guidance in finding better forms of water management. Unli…
Read More…ic, an influential figure in Saudi Arabia who was once held as a political prisoner, has provoked a fierce reaction in the country, where public opinion is strongly anti-LGBT. It is often difficult to confirm data about gay people charged under Saudi Arabia’s justice system, as consensual homosexual acts are often legally indistinguishable from rape or paedophilia under the country’s laws. But it was reported last month that prosecutors in the cou…
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…itors to the province. In September 2014, the Aceh provincial parliament approved the Principles of the Islamic Bylaw and the Islamic criminal code, which created new discriminatory offenses that do not exist in the Indonesian national criminal code. The bylaws extend Sharia to non-Muslims and criminalize consensual same-sex sexual acts as well as all zina (sexual relations outside of marriage). The criminal code permits as punishment up to 100 la…
Read More…, DI fellow and spokesman John West is upset over the fact that I didn’t appropriately credit those at Discovery for their creationist tactics. West objects to this paragraph: As always, since intelligent design was ruled unconstitutional in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the introduced bills rely on such creationist code words as “teaching the controversy,” “academic freedom,” or “critical analysis.” His argument is that the Discovery Institute was promoti…
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…lay his hands on their heads, and receive their church membership slip. Unprepared to forsake what was a still-fresh sexual identity, I would always bow my head during the ‘call,’ mimicking deep prayerfulness. Still, at times I’d become hot and flushed, convinced the pastor’s eyes were boring into me, daring me to speak up—like one Wednesday evening in February I can recall vividly. I was, as usual, seated toward the back of the Assembléia de Deu…
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…e research projects on recreational fear in the haunt, so it seemed only appropriate to use an image of one of their sets. It’s atmospheric, I think, disturbing and suggestive at the same time. There’s a faint light at the end of that hallway. But do you want to go there? Are you willing to pass that door, and whatever’s behind it, in search of enlightenment? It strikes me as a neat visual metaphor for what horror has to offer. Is there a book out…
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…gence apps” including As One America, which contains the name, address and phone number of Christian neighbors “who are not showing up to vote or who are not registered.” He then showed a map with big red arrows pointing to precincts “within striking distance” from Vida Church to the precincts that are “where the devil’s got a stronghold that God wants to break up.” The app was developed by Superfeed Technologies, which has also designed apps for…
Read More…al calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations. Darden believes that Warren’s noncommittal statement revealed that the evangelical Christian community didn’t believe that the Uganda story would be such big news in the United States and that they would not be asked to address it. Darden said she tried to impress upon Ross just how serious this story was, and with Maddow pushing it nightly on her…
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